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THE    FAMILY  OF   REV.   DR.  GEORGE   MOOAR 

Class 


{puritan  Spirit 


BY 


RICHARD    SALTER  STORRS,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


AN  ORATION  delivered  before 
The  Congregational  Club  in  Tremont 
Temple  Boston  i8th  December 
1889  and  published  by  their  request 


ICAGO 

CONGREGATIONAL  SUNDAY-SCHOOL  AND  PUBLISHING  SOCIETY 


COPYRIGHT,  1890,  BY 
CONGREGATIONAL  SUNDAY-SCHOOL  AND  PUBLISHING  SOCIETY 


Electrotyped  and  Printed  by 
Samuel  Usher,  777  Devonshire  Street,  Boston,  Mass. 


puritan 

AN    ORATION 

MR.  PRESIDENT,  LADIES,  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  — 
When  I  rashly  yielded  to  the  request  of 
your  Committee,  and  promised  to  deliver  an 
address  before  the  Congregational  Club  on 
this  occasion,  I  expected  it  to  be  that  com- 
paratively simple  and  informal  thing  which 
one  styles  familiarly  an  Address ;  delivered 
before  a  company  of  a  few  hundred  persons, 
many  of  them,  doubtless,  my  personal  friends. 
I  did  not  anticipate  that  in  the  air  of  Boston, 
a  sup  of  which  the  early  immigrants  declared 
equal  to  a  draught  of  English  ale,  and  in  the 
exuberant  fancy  of  the  Committee,  what  I  had 
proposed  might 

"  suffer  a  sea-change 

Into  something  rich  and  strange," 

and  be  set  forth  to  the  public  as  an  Oration, 
gathering  this  vast  assembly  by  which  I  am 
partly  animated  but  chiefly  appalled.  How- 
ever, you  will  not  forget,  I  am  sure,  my  modest 
promise ;  and  if  I  can  not  conduct  you,  as  I 
can  not,  through  any  House  Beautiful,  such  as 
Boston  Orations  are  known  and  are  expected 


€lje  puritan  Spirit 


to  be,  you  will  let  me  introduce  you  to  an 
unobtrusive  and  commonplace  structure  of 
thought,  such  as  may  reasonably  bear  upon 
its  low  and  unadorned  lintel  the  name 
"Address." 

It    is   often    said   by  those  who    desire    the 

highest   welfare  of  the  nation,   and   who    feel 

that  to  such  welfare  right  moral  and  spiritual 

1  forces  are  first  of  all   needful,  that  what   this 

THE  NEED  OF 

THE  PURITAN    country  chiefly  needs,  to  maintain  and  exalt  its 

SPIRIT 

place  in  the  world,  is  a  larger  measure  of  the 
Puritan  spirit,  in  energetic  development  and  in 
wide  distribution. 

Fundamentally,  the  vast  effort,  pursued  now 
for  a  hundred  years,  to  plant  churches  at  the 
West,  with  schools,  colleges,  seminaries  of 
whatever  class,  to  inspire  and  mold  instruction 
there,  has  had  in  this  feeling  its  impulse  and 
motive ;  and  its  value  has  been  estimated,  by 
those  who  have  made  it,  by  its  success  in  this 
direction.  The  same  thing  is  substantially 
true  of  the  similar  efforts  now  being  made, 
with  unsurpassed  patience  and  energy,  at  the 
South  and  in  the  New  West.  The  effort  is 
to  practically  New  Englandize  the  continent ; 
and  however  it  has  changed  in  our  time,  in 


puritan 


its  special  forms  of  manifestation,  the  Puritan 
spirit  is  that  which  has  given  to  New  England 
its  characteristic  place  and  power  in  the  vastly 
enlarged  national  organism.  The  many  insti- 
tutions, of  rising  rank  and  growing  power,  all 
over  the  vast  area  of  the  country,  show  the 
energy  of  this  impulse,  with  its  partial  and 
perhaps  its  prophetic  success. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  hardly  any 
proposal  meets  fiercer  opposition  in  many 
quarters  than  does  this  very  one.  "It  is 
precisely  this  Puritan  spirit,"  multitudes  say, 
"  which  we  do  not  want.  It  would  be  well  s 
if  it  could  be  practically  extirpated  in  New 
England  itself.  To  carry  it  through  the 
country  would  be  to  fetter  and  pervert  the 
whole  development  of  the  nation,  and  to  em- 
barrass or  thwart  its  career.  It  may  easily 
bring  about  a  popular  revolution.  We  need 
to  move,  distinctly  and  purposely,  in  the  oppo- 
site direction  ;  to  break  away  from  restraints, 
to  emerge  finally  from  the  earlier  glooms,  and 
to  secure  on  all  sides  ampler  tolerance,  larger 
freedom  of  opinion  and  custom.  The  con- 
trary effort  will  be  vain,  and  may  be  destructive, 
forcing  a  fierce,  if  not  a  fatal,  explosion." 


8  €fje  puritan 


Probably  this  feeling  was  never  wider  or 
more  energetic  than  it  is  at  this  hour.  The 
incessant  inrush  of  immigration  from  abroad 
adds  constantly  to  its  volume.  The  expansion 
of  population  over  wider  spaces  increases  its 
extensiveness,  if  not  its  intensity.  As  secular 
interests  become  more  prominent,  and  the 
towers  of  exchanges,  newspaper  offices,  insur- 
ance and  telegraph  buildings,  surpass  and 
dwarf  the  spires  of  churches,  it  naturally  in- 
creases ;  and  as  men  depart  further  from  the 
inherited  faith  of  their  fathers,  either  in  the 
direction  of  Vaticanism  on  the  one  hand,  or 
of  agnosticism  on  the  other,  this  feeling  be- 
comes more  keen  and  controlling.  In  regard 
to  no  one  subject,  therefore,  affecting  our 
national  development  and  career,  is  the  contest 
fiercer  than  in  regard  to  this  ;  and  few  signs 
appear  that  it  is  to  subside,  for  years  to  come, 
in  any  general  harmony  of  judgment. 

It  may  be  worth  while,  then,  to  consider 
111  particularly  what  it  is  which  really  constitutes, 

WIDE  AREA  OF    r  J 

PuRITAN  and  effectively  differentiates,  the  Puritan  spirit  ; 
and  to  look  at  this  as  it  has  widely  appeared 
in  the  world,  not  merely  or  mainly  in  this 
province  of  New  England.  New  England  is 


$uritan 


an  important  district,  though  it  may  not  appear 
as  vast  as  it  once  did,  when  one  has  lived  for 
forty-odd  years  outside  its  bounds.  But  it  is 
certainly  by  no  means  considerable,  as  ter- 
ritorially related  to  the  surface  of  the  earth, 
or  even  of  the  continent.  Two  hundred  and 
seventy  years  are  a  considerable  period  of  time, 
but  they  dwindle  to  insignificance  before  the 
recorded  centuries  of  history. 

Perhaps  enough  has  been  said  of  the  Puritan 
spirit  as  it  has  appeared  in  these  immediate 
delightful  surroundings.  It  has  been  sketched 
in  poetry,  and  in  picturesque  prose,  in  philo- 
sophical discussion,  and  with  elaborate  elo- 
quence, with  witty  jest  and  in  fascinating 
fiction  ;  sometimes,  perhaps,  with  extravagant 
eulogy,  and  sometimes,  we  know,  with 
extraordinary  force  of  hatred  and  derision. 
There  are  those  around  me,  on  this  platform, 
who  have  contributed  memorably  to  this 
discussion,  with  ample  learning,  in  admirable 
utterance,  with  a  just  enthusiasm  for  those 
whose  blood  they  have  inherited,  and  whose 
names  they  have  nobly  adorned.  It  is  not 
necessary,  and  it  is  not  at  all  my  present 
purpose,  to  add  to  this  special  profuse  dis- 


io  Cfje  puritan 


cussion.  Let  us  look,  rather,  at  the  Puritan 
spirit  as  it  has  asserted  itself  at  large,  on  an 
ampler  area,  in  the  broader  ranges  of  general 
history.  We  may  there  see  it  more  clearly, 
perhaps  ;  as  one  sees  a  mountain,  in  its 
majestic  and  harmonious  outlines,  most  dis- 
tinctly from  a  distance,  not  from  its  base,  or 
from  the  sides  or  shoulders  of  it  ;  —  the  Ober- 
land  group,  from  the  terrace  at  Berne  ;  the 
Graian  or  the  Pennine  Alps,  fr.om  the  streets 
of  Turin,  or  from  the  cathedral  roof  at  Milan. 
Our  first  question  must  naturally  be  :  What 
are  the  elements  vitally  involved  in  the  dis- 
OF  tinctive  Puritan  spirit,  as  that  has  hitherto  and 

THE     PURITAN 

SPIRIT  in  general  experience  appeared  in  the  world  ? 

Let  us  disengage  these,  as  far  as  we  may,  from 
individual  traits,  which  are  as  various  as  the 
millionfold  crinkles  along  a  coast,  and  survey 
them  impersonally,  before  we  regard  them  in 
particular  examples. 

The  spirit,  as  such,  is  not  to  be  identified,  of 
course,  with  any  specific  form  either  of 
doctrine  or  of  worship,  since  it  has  appeared 
in  connection  with  many,  and  has  continued 
positive  and  permanent,  while  they  have  been 
widely  and  variously  changed.  The  elements 


Cfje  puritan  Spirit  n 

involved  in  it  are  essentially  moral,  and 
earnestly  practical,  not  theoretical ;  and  they 
are  not  difficult  to  ascertain  and  exhibit. 

The  first  is,  I  think  we  all    shall   agree,  an  ^i.  A?  intense 

conviction  of 

intense  conviction  of  that  which  is  apprehended  *pptrhehende 
as  truth,  with  a  consequent  desire  to  maintain 
and   extend   it,    and   to    bring    all    others,    if 
possible,  to  affirm  it. 

It  by  no  means  follows,  you  observe,  that 
what  is  thus  apprehended  is  truth,  or  is  truth 
in  harmonious  and  complete  exhibition.  No 
man,  or  body  of  men,  according  to  our  con- 
ception of  things,  is  infallible  on  all  subjects, 
or  even  on  any,  history  being  witness ;  and 
very  different  forms  of  thought  have  at  different 
times  drawn  to  themselves  the  intense  con- 
viction of  human  minds.  It  is  the  vigor,  the 
moral  energy  of  the  conviction,  which  belongs 
to  and  which  characterizes  the  Puritan  spirit. 

Usually,  this  concerns  supremely  moral  or 
religious  propositions,  rather  than  those  which 
are  political  or  philosophical ;  though  the 
latter  may  no  doubt  take  occasional  supremacy, 
as  being  involved  in  the  others,  or  closely 
associated  with  them.  Usually,  too,  it  is 
founded,  you  will  notice,  on  personal  inquiry, 


12  Cfje  puritan  Spirit 

individual  reflection,  not  on  traditional  impres- 
sions or  external  instruction  ;  while,  very  largely, 
it  takes  its  aggressive  and  resolute  force  from 
personal  experience,  which  seems,  of  course, 
to  give  an  assurance  that  nothing  else  can. 
So  the  conviction  is  sharp-set  and  energetic, 
however  narrow  it  may  seem  to  those  who  do 
not  share  it.  It  may  be  wanting,  as  not 
unfrequently  it  has  been,  in  breadth  of  view, 
and  in  clearness  of  perspective ;  but  it  is  never 
wavering  or  weak.  It  is  naturally  uncom- 
promising toward  what  contradicts  it ;  and  it 
perhaps  too  easily  makes  one  impatient  of 
divergence  in  opinion,  liable  to  suspect  moral 
error  in  those  not  mentally  agreeing  with  it. 
It  is  not  particularly  catholic  in  temper,  and 
not  usually  conciliatory  in  forms  of  expression  ; 
and  to  those  who  do  not  have  definite,  urgent, 
and  sovereign  opinions,  it  may  easily  seem 
imperious  and  harsh,  repellently  arrogant. 

But  it  becomes,  by  reason  of  its  strength,  a 
very  positive  power  in  the  world  of  thought. 
It  leads  one  to  risk  much  on  his  convictions,  to 
be  utterly  bold  on  their  behalf,  and  to  be  ready 
to  stand  or  fall  with  them  before  God  and  the 
universe :  and  in  this  is  always  dignity  and 


puritan  Spirit  13 


power.  It  is  in  exact  antithesis  —  this  distinc- 
tive Puritan  spirit  —  to  that  indifferent,  pyrrhonic 
temper,  always  popular  in  the  world,  and  never 
more  so  than  in  our  time,  which  thinks  one 
opinion  about  as  good  as  another  —  this  more 
probable,  perhaps,  that  more  doubtful,  but  no 
one  of  all  absolutely  and  certainly  true. 

An  accomplished  friend  of  mine,  somewhat 
critical  perhaps  of  accepted  opinions,  once 
heard  a  sermon  from  an  eminent  divine  of 
New  England,  on  the  character  of  Judas,  in 
which  the  sordid  and  treacherous  meanness  of 
the  apostate  apostle,  ripening  into  stupendous 
crime,  was  traced  with  a  touch  as  delicate  and 
vivid  as  the  severity  was  unsparing.  As  he 
passed  from  the  church,  a  friend  said  to  him, 
"  What  a  terrific  discourse  that  was  !  so  true  to 
the  record,  so  true  to  life,  and  so  startlingly 
true  to  the  secrets  of  sin  !  "  "  Yes,"  was  his 
reply,  "  it  was  certainly  a  tremendous  sirmming 
up  against  Judas  ;  but  some  things,  I  think, 
might  fairly  be  said  upon  the  other  side." 
That  is  always  the  temper  which  is  restless  in 
conclusions,  which  doubts  whatever  it  does  not 
see,  and  which  can  accept  no  result  of  thought 
as  beyond  the  reach  of  further  revision.  You 


14  €l)e  puritan 


may  like  it,  perhaps.  For  the  evening,  at  least, 
I  shall  open  no  quarrel  with  it.  I  only  point 
out  the  fact  that  it  is  as  alien  from  the  Puritan 
temper  as  is  that  of  the  careless  observer  of 
society  from  that  of  the  heroic  reformer  ;  as 
was  that  of  Erasmus  from  that  of  John  Huss  ; 
as  that  of  the  "  free  lance,"  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
bold  and  skillful,  but  ready  to  follow  any  banner 
which  paid  him  best,  from  that  of  the  perhaps 
mistaken  but  always  chivalric  soldier  or  knight, 
who  would  fight  to  the  death  for  church  and 
crown. 

On  its  intellectual  side,  this  fairly  exhibits 
the  Puritan  spirit. 

But  also,  with  this  intellectual  temper,  is 
associated  characteristically,  in  this  spirit,  an 

intense    sense   of  the    authority   of  righteous- 
authority    of  ....  . 

righteousness   ness,    as   constituting   the    imperative   law   for 

mankind,  only  in  obedience  to  which  is  it  pos- 
sible to  realize  true  human  nobleness  and 
beauty. 

Here  again,  you  observe,  it  by  no  means 
follows  that  that  which  is  conceived  to  be  right- 
eous is  so  in  fact,  or  is  so  fully.  Men's  moral 
judgment  of  particulars,  in  action  or  in  habit, 
may  be  widely  and  diversely  mistaken.  It  is 


apt  to  be  variously  shaped  and  shaded  through 
the  impressions  of  early  instruction,  of  exter- 
nal influences,  of  transmitted  prepossessions, 
not  unfrequently  through  the  force  of  an  un- 
suspected self-interest  turning  the  delicate 
indicating  needle  from  the  true  North  ;  so  that 
courses  of  action  seeming  right  to  some  shall 
be  to  others  ethically  offensive,  and  even  the 
crimes  of  one  state  of  society  shall  appear 
virtues  to  another.  Thus,  in  our  time,  slavery 
has  been  assailed  and  defended,  with  equal 
vehemence  and  with  equal  tenacity,  by  those  in 
whom  was  the  Puritan  spirit ;  as  in  other  days 
the  divine  right  of  kings,  and  the  duty  of 
regicide,  have  alike  found  supporters  among 
them.  No  special  code  of  formal  regulations 
belongs,  distinctively,  to  the  Puritan  spirit. 

But  that  which  is  peculiar  to  it  is  the  convic- 
tion of  a  law  of  righteousness,  the  omnipres- 
ent, superlative,  and  unyielding  law  in  the 
universe  of  mind,  before  which  self-interest 
must  be  silent,  against  which  the  power  of 
human  passion  vainly  breaks,  in  conformity 
with  which  human  laws  have  justification  and 
vindication,  and  find  their  only  secure  support. 
Theoretically,  of  course,  Cicero  had  recognized 


1 6  ®fje  puritan  Spirit 

this  in  what  Lactantius  called  the  "  almost 
divine  words  "  of  the  Republic  ;  as  did  Seneca 
afterward  ;  as  Plato  had  done  before ;  and  as 
Sophocles  had  put  into  the  lips  of  the  doomed 
Antigone  the  recognition  of  the  "  unwritten 
and  immovable  laws  of  the  gods,"  eternally 
vital,  which  no  mortal  may  justly  transgress. 
But  the  peculiarity  of  the  Puritan  spirit  is  that 
it  affirms  this  with  tremendous  emphasis,  un- 
dertakes to  test  everything  by  it,  and  is  de- 
termined to  force  it  into  practice,  whatever 
happens.  /  The  Puritan  is  constitutionally, 
always,  the  incarnate  conscience  of  his  time; 
and,  as  one  of  our  present  illustrious  guests 
said,  in  substance,  fifty  years  ago  this  week,  in 
an  Address  which  was  an  Oration,  in  the  city  of 
New  York,  "  It  was  Conscience  in  the  Pilgrims 
which  brought  them  to  these  shores ;  inspiring 
a  courage,  confirming  a  resolution,  and  accom- 
plishing an  enterprise,  for  the  parallel  of  which 
men  vainly  search  the  records  of  the  world."1 
This  temper  brings  one,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  into  elemental  conflict  with  those  who 
hold  that  the  law  of  the  state,  or  the  custom 

1  An  Address  delivered  before  the  New  England  Society  in  the  city  of 
New  York,  December  23,  1839,  by  Robert  C.  Winthrop.  Boston :  Perkins 
&  Marvin.  1840. 


tfktritan  Spirit  17 


of  society,  is  the  ultimate  rule  ;  which  is 
simply  equivalent  to  saying  that  there  is 
nothing  higher  in  the  universe  than  "  the 
low-hung  sky  of  Time  ;  "  with  those  who 
affirm,  too,  that  what  is  for  a  man's  profit  and 
pleasure  is  always  permissible,  certainly  if 
involving  no  damage  to  others  ;  with  those 
who  hold  that  any  ideal  law  is  a  matter  of 
poetic  fancy  and  ethereal  illusion,  and  that 
practical  maxims,  like  those  of  Poor  Richard, 
derived  from  economic  experience,  are  the  true 
guide  of  human  life.  Neither  of  these  ethical 
tendencies  has  anything  whatever  of  the 
Puritan  in  it. 

But  when  one  affirms  an  invisible  law,  — 
"  vera  lex"  as  Cicero  says,  "  recta  ratio,  .  .  . 
diffusa  in  omnes,  constans,  sempiternal  l  — 

1  "  Est  quidem  vera  lex,  recta  ratio,  naturae  congruens,  diffusa  in 
omnes,  constans,  sempiterna;  quae  vocet  ad  officium  jubendo,  vetando  a 
fraude  deterreat;  quae  tamen  neque  probos  frustra  jubet  aut  vetat,  nee 
improbos  jubendo  aut  vetando  movet.  Huic  legi  nee  obrogari  fas  est, 
neque  derogari  ex  hac  aliquid  licet,  neque  tota  abrogari  potest  :  nee  vero 
aut  per  senatum,  aut  per  populum  solvi  hac  lege  possumus  :  neque  est 
quaerendus  explanator,  aut  interpres  ejus  alius  :  nee  erit  alia  lex  Romae, 
alia  Athenis  ;  alia  nunc,  alia  posthac  ;  sed  et  omnes  gentes  et  omni  tempore 
una  lex,  et  sempiterna,  et  immutabilis  continebit  :  unusque  erit  communis 
quasi  magister  et  imperator  omnium  Deus,  ille  legis  hujus  inventor,  discep- 
tator,  lator  ;  cui  qui  non  parebit,  ipse  se  fugiet,  ac  naturam  hominis  asperna- 
tus,  hoc  ipso  luet  maximas  pcenas,  etiam  si  cetera  supplicia,  quae  putantur, 
effugerit."  De  Repub.  iii  :  17. 

Lactantius'  words  are  :  "  Dei  lex,  quam  Marcus  Tullius  in  libro  de  Rep. 
tertio  paene  divina  voce  depinxit."  Div.  Inst.  vi  :  8. 


1 8  Cije  puritan  Spirit 

above  all  human  rule  and  custom,  which  he  is 
eternally  bound  to  obey,  and  whose  sublime 
precepts  he  must  accomplish,  whatever  the  cost 
and  whatever  the  result  —  there  is  the  essential 
Puritan  spirit.  The  man  may  be  absurdly 
mistaken  in  particulars  ;  the  circumstances  and 
the  drapery  of  his  life  may  be  sumptuous  or 
mean  ;  he  may  be  on  the  throne,  or  brooding 
alone  in  sterile  fields ;  his  name  among  men 
may  be  anything  you  please :  but  his  moral 
temper  is  always  the  same,  whether  in  heathen- 
dom or  in  Christendom,  in  the  middle  age  or 
in  this  age,  in  Massachusetts  or  beyond  the 
Pacific. 

That  moral  temper  associates  him  with  many 
from  whom  in  other  things  he  stands  widely 
apart.  You  see  it  in  Stuart  Mill  as  clearly, 
perhaps,  as  in  any  old  stoic ;  in  Emerson, 
and  in  Whittier,  whose  recent  birthday  the 
country  honored,  as  in  any  early  New  England 
divine.  The  law  of  righteousness,  dimly  dis- 
cerned, perhaps,  but  affirmed  without  debate 
and  applied  without  flinching  —  that  is  the 
element.  Goethe  spoke  to  Eckermann,  you 
may  remember,  of  his  dislike  for  a  too 
tender  conscience,  which  tended,  he  thought, 


UNIVERSITY 

. 
^  *r 

puritan  Spirit  19 


to  fix  men's  moral  view  on  themselves,  and  to 
make  them  hypochondriacal  ;  and  elsewhere, 
in  a  passage  of  his  autobiography,  he  con- 
gratulates himself  on  having  left  behind  a  cer- 
tain anguish  of  conscience,  with  the  altar  and 
the  Church,  to  all  which  he  felt  himself 
thenceforth  superior.  But  Goethe,  with  all 
his  many-sided  genius  and  his  surpassing 
accomplishments,  was  as  little  of  a  Puritan  — 
with  the  possible  exception  of  Alcibiades  — 
as  ever  set  foot  upon  the  planet. 

It  is  noticeable,  too,  that  with  this  intense 
sense  of  the  authority  of  righteousness,  comes 
naturally,  though  not  universally,  a  profound 
assurance  of  a  Personal  Power  at  the  head  of 
the  universe,  who  is  working  for  righteousness, 
and  who  means  to  make  it  triumphant  in  the 
world. 

Of  course  this  is  the  Biblical  idea,  on  which 
all  promises  and  provisions  of  the  Scripture 
are  based  and  set.  But  it  is  by  no  means 
universally  accepted,  even  among  those  who 
daily  walk  beneath  the  light  of  the  Scripture. 
Many  feel,  practically,  in  our  time  as  in  other 
times,  that  substantially  the  present  course  of 
things  is  to  go  on  to  the  end  —  industry, 


3  A  profound 
God'Trighteou* 


i 


20  €J>c  puritan  Spirit 

commerce,  war,  crime,  pleasure,  punishment, 
following  each  other  in  ceaseless  succession ; 
sometimes  right  uppermost,  and  sometimes 
wrong,  even  as  now  ;  that  education  will  be 
widened,  inventions  multiplied,  wealth  in- 
creased, but  that  the  old  tangle  of  experience 
will  remain,  with  the  same  confused  elements 
contending  in  it,  till  the  completion  of  the 
history  of  mankind. 

The  Puritan  is  he  who  looks  for  the  absolute 
final  dominion  of  righteousness  on  the  earth, 
without  which  society  never  can  be  perfect, 
through  which  alone  true  welfare  can  be 
reached,  in  which  the  earth  shall  be  illumined 
and  morally  crowned ;  who  looks  for  this 
because  he  believes  there  is  always  One,  at  the 
head  of  the  Universe,  intent  on  this  end  and 
sure  to  achieve  it.  The  moral  argument  for 
God  is  essentially  supreme  with  such  a  man. 
The  ethical  quality  is  to  him  the  highest  in  the 
Most  High.  To  hear  God  described  as  "  the 
sum  of  natural  forces,"  or  as  a  being  of  power 
and  skill,  with  no  sovereignty  of  an  eternal 
righteousness  in  him,  is  to  such  an  one  the 
final  offence  against  reason  and  conscience. 
God  is  sublime  to  him,  not  so  much  because 


puritan  Spirit  21 


braiding  the  light,  or  launching  the  lightnings, 
or  bending  the  heavens  in  an  arch  of  circles 
which  no  telescope  can  search,  as  because  he 
accepts  righteousness  as  the  law  ;  and  his 
government  is  august  because  he  will  make 
this  universal.  Here  is  the  key  to  the  Puritan 
theology,  wherever  that  has  appeared  in 
history.  Here  is  the  dominant  note  in  the 
personal  Puritan  life.  It  is  a  determining  fact 
in  character.  It  associates  souls  in  a  mystic 
and  wide  communion.  Men  may  call  such 
a  man  Quaker  or  Catholic,  Cavalier  or  Round- 
head, heretic  or  believer  :  he  is  as  truly  of  the 
spiritual  Puritan  stock  as  if  he  had  fought  with 
Cromwell  at  Naseby,  had  faced  the  flame  with 
the  cheerfulness  of  Ridley,  or  had  worshiped 
in  the  earliest  and  rudest  huts  of  the  Plymouth 
colony. 

I  have  specified  three  elements  in  the  Puritan 

•    .  ATI  i  111  dignity  of  man. 

spirit.  A  fourth  one  must  be  added  :  a  pro- 
found sense  of  the  invisible  world  as  the 
immortal  realm  of  righteousness,  and  of  the 
dignity  of  the  nature  of  man,  who  is  con- 
stitutionally related  to  that,  and  to  the 
righteousness  which  is  sovereign  in  it.  J 
The  dignity  of  man's  nature,  I  say,  you 


22  Cf)e  puritan  Spirit 

observe.  This  is  by  no  means  to  be  con- 
founded with  any  high  estimate  put  on  his 
character.  On  the  other  hand,  the  higher 
one's  estimate  of  his  nature,  in  its  inborn 
relationship  to  righteousness  and  to  God,  the 
sharper  will  be,  usually,  his  criticism  of  himself, 
and  perhaps  his  moral  condemnation  of  others. 
It  is  the  man  of  Epicurean  life  and  thought 
who  thinks  too  lightly  or  too  highly  of  himself, 
having  no  noble  etjiical  standard  by  which  to 
try  his  moral  life.  The  austere  judgment  of 
one  who  reveres  God  as  righteous  will  strike 
with  sharpest  and  hardest  stroke  on  all  con- 
scious folly  and  sin ;  and  despair  is  apt  to  be 
nearer  to  such  an  one  than  any  self-exaltation. 
But  the  estimate  of  the  human  personality  is 
wonderfully  different  in  the  Epicurean,  to 
whom  life  is  only  a  holiday-game,  and  in  the 
Puritan,  to  whom  it  is  an  arena  for  sublime 
struggle  and  heroic  achievement  in  the  service 
of  righteousness.  "Bury  me  with  my  dogs" 
is  a  saying  which  has  sometimes  been  attributed 
to  Frederick  the  Great,  as  he  drew  toward 
death.  It  might  have  been  said  by  him,  though 
probably  it  was  not.  To  the  Puritan  the  very 
body  is  sacred,  as  having  been  the  shrine  of 


Cfje  puritan  Spirit  23 

that  personal  soul  which  is  allied  with  the 
immensities.  In  himself,  as  in  others,  he  rec- 
ognizes profoundly  supernal  relations. 

Man  is  to  him  naturally  a  great  person ;  with 
great  powers  for  discerning  the  truth,  and  serv- 
ing the  cause  of  a  divine  justice ;  on  a  solemn 
and  divine  errand  in  the  world ;  constitution- 
ally affined  to  invisible  spheres,  and  to  Him 
who  is  supreme  amid  them ;  not  far  beneath 
the  level  of  celestial  intelligences  ;  to  whom  it 
is  natural  that  there  should  come  divine  teach- 
ings, and  even  present  divine  impulses ;  for 
whom  no  miraculous  intervention  is  too  amaz- 
ing to  be  believed ;  before  whom  arises  the 
great  White  Throne.  Differences  of  human  ^L 
condition  are  little.  The  question  of  more  or 
less  culture,  of  more  or  less  success  in  the 
world,  is  of  no  account  to  one  who  looks  thus 
on  the  nature  of  man.  The  personal  soul,  in 
castle  or  cabin,  in  palaces  or  in  chains  —  that  is 
the  supreme  thing  on  the  planet ;  for  which, 
indeed,  the  planet  was  builded  and  is  main- 
tained ;  by  the  presence  of  which  the  earth 
becomes  a  vital  and  a  significant  part  of  the 

universe  which  has  God  in  it,  with  ranks  and 

I 

orders  of  intelligent  spirits.     For  this  the  Cross 


24  Cfje  f&uritan  Spirit 

was  set,  under  shadowed  heavens,  on  the 
amazed  and  quaking  earth.  Above  this  are 
opened  the  gates  of  light. 

This  honor  for  the  soul,  as  related  to  God 
and  to  the  holy  and  bright  Immensity,  is  as 
essentially  as  anything  else  a  characteristic 
force  and  element  in  the  Puritan  spirit.  Mas- 
son  gives  a  perfect  illustration  of  it  when,  in 
his  Life  of  Milton,  he  describes  the  great  poet, 
at  his  graduation  from  Cambridge  in  1632,  two 
years  after  some  of  our  ancestors  reached  these 
shores,  as  characterized  by  a  solemn  and  even 
an  austere  demeanor  of  mind,  connected  with 
which,  he  says,  was  a  haughty  yet  not  immod- 
est self-esteem,  since  he  recognized  himself  as 
an  endowed  servant  of  the  Most  High,  and  was 
accordingly  daringly  resentful  of  any  interfer- 
ence, from  whatever  quarter,  with  his  complete 
intellectual  freedom.  That  was  precisely  the 
Puritan  spirit.  Even  the  portraits  of  Puritans 
show  it,  whether  by  Van  Dyke  on  the  other 
side  of  the  ocean,  or  by  Copley  on  this.  Men 
have  thought  of  this  temper  as  wholly  subdued, 
if  not  overwhelmed,  in  its  unquestioning  rever- 
ence toward  God.  His  authority  it  has  not 
doubted,  because  his  character  has  arisen  before 


puritan  Spirit  25 


it,  glorious  in  holiness.  But  it  has  been  the 
most  imperious  temper  of  the  world  in  its  as- 
sertion of  man's  independence,  as  responsible 
to  God  ;  as  already  by  nature  what  he  would 
make  it  morally,  by  operations  of  grace,  his 
son  and  heir.  This  is  the  temper  in  which  the 
Scriptures  have  been  studied  ;  in  which  preach- 
ing has  become  the  great  function  which  it  has 
been  in  the  Puritan  congregations  —  whether 
performed  in  the  Genevan  gown,  or  in  the  sur- 
plice, or  in  neither.  This  is  the  temper  in 
which  learning  has  been  cultivated  with  inces- 
sant assiduity  ;  in  which  Harvard  College  was 
established,  in  the  midst  of  extreme  poverty 
and  weakness,  to  become  the  vast  and  opulent 
university  in  which  to-day  the  land  rejoices, 
and  from  which  it  takes  a  beautiful  renown. 
Such  enthusiasm  for  learning  never  will  cease 
while  the  Puritan  conception  of  man's  nature 
continues. 

We  have  noticed  some  principal  elements  in         v 

DEFICIENCIES 

the  Puritan  spirit.     Let  us  observe,  and    with  ™  THE  PURI- 

TAN SPIRIT 

equal  care,  some  grave  and  palpable  deficien- 
cies in  it.  To  it  belong,  not  unnaturally,  the 
defects  of  its  virtues,  and  the  roughnesses  of 
its  strength.  It  is  not  easy  for  any  man,  or 


26  Qfyt  puritan 


any  body  of  men,  to  have  the  armor  of  right- 
eousness equally  and  fully  on  the  right  hand 
and  on  the  left.  And  the  evident  deficiencies 
or  faults  which  appear  in  connectipn  with  the 
Puritan  temper  are  such  as  to  excite,  among 
multitudes  of  men,  a  very  vigorous  dissent  and 
dislike.  They  are  often  assailed  with  the  sharp- 
est and  most  contemptuous  ridicule,  are  some- 
times encountered  with  the  fiercest  animosity. 

One  of  them,  certainly,  is  a  want  of  interest 
in  things  esthetic  ;  in  the  products  of  fancy, 
of  artistic  genius,  of  dexterous  skill,  in  what 
has  it  for  its  office  to  add  the  ornament  of 
beauty  to  life.  It  is  not  by  accident  that 
the  Puritan  spirit  has  been  often  iconoclastic, 
shattering  statues  or  burning  them  into  lime, 
melting  in  furnaces  the  rich  and  precious 
monumental  brasses,  shivering  the  loveliest 
stained  glass  as  if  it  were  frost-work  on  the 
window,  cutting  pictures  in  pieces,  and  once, 
at  least,  offering  twenty  thousand  pounds,  as 
it  is  said  in  my  family  tradition  that  a  Puritan 
did  to  Oliver  Cromwell,  for  permission  to  burn 
the  pile  of  York  Minster. 

Not  for  the  Puritan,  in  his  reserved  and 
haughty  consciousness  of  supernal  relations,  is 


puritan  Spirit  27 


the  dainty  sumptuousness  of  color,  the  sym- 
metric grace  of  molded  marbles,  the  rhythmic 
reach  and  stately  height  of  noble  architecture, 
the  pathos  and  the  mystery  of  music.  His 
spirit  has  been  too  intense,  his  mind  too 
heavily  charged  with  urgent  and  imperial 
themes,  his  will  too  set  and  strenuous  for 
achievement  in  the  world-battle  to  which  he 
feels  himself  engaged,  to  allow  him  to  pause 
upon  things  like  these.  [They  have  seemed  to 
him  glittering  and  deceptive  gauds  ;  tinseled 
shows,  hiding  the  sun  ;  products  of  the 
pleasure-loving  part  of  man's  nature,  not  min- 
istering to  truth  and  righteousness,  and  to 
man's  supreme  welfare.  He  has  therefore 
dashed  them  before  him  as  frail  things,  of  no 
moral  worth,  and  liable  even  to  be  dangerously 
alluring. 

He  has  not  remembered  that  to  some  minds 
a  relish  for  what  is  lovely  in  fancy  and  in  art 
is  as  native  as  color  to  the  violet,  fragrance  to 
the  rose,  or  song  to  the  bird  ;  *that  God's  own 
mind  must  eternally  teem  with  beauty,  since 
he  lines  with  it  the  tiny  sea-shell,  and  tints  the 
fish,  and  tones  the  hidden  fibres  of  trees,  and 
flashes  it  on  breast  and  crest  of  flying  birds, 


28  Cfje  puritan 


and  breaks  the  tumbling  avalanche  into 
myriads  of  feathery  crystals,  and  builds  the 
skies  in  a  splendor,  to  a  rhythm,  which  no 
thought  can  match.  It  has  been  a  narrow- 
ness, though  a  narrowness  that  has  had 
depth  in  it,  and  that  has  not  been  merely 
superficial  and  noisy.  And  it  has  been  a 
narrowness  for  which  the  Puritan  has  suf- 
fered, in  the  diminution  of  his  influence  in 
the  world,  and  in  the  darkening  of  his  fame, 
more  than  others  for  conspicuous  crimes.  I 
recognize  the  fact,  and  have  no  contention  to 
make  against  it,  though  I  can  not  but  regret 
it  with  all  my  heart. 

^^k  is  obvious,  too,  that  with  this  disesteem  of 
things  esthetic  has  been  often  associated  a 
foolish  contempt  for  the  minor  elegancies  of 

'  life,  of  letters,  of  personal  manners,  and  of 
social  equipment,  with  sometimes  a  positively 
dangerous  disdain  of  the  common  innocent 
pleasures  of  life. 

Unquestionably,  and  for  the  same  reason,  — 
its  intensity  of  conviction,  its  supreme  devo- 
tion to  what  it  conceives  as  the  absolute  right- 
eousness, —  the  typical  historic  Puritan  spirit 
has  had  in  it  something  harsh  and  rigid, 


€l)e  puritan  Spirit  29 

repellent,  indeed,  and  almost  relentless,  toward 
the  minor  refinements  of  thought  and  speech. 
It  is  too  downright,  and  determinately  insistent, 
to  give  sympathy  to  these.  There  have  been, 
as  there  will  be,  signal  exceptions ;  elegant 
scholars,  accomplished  artists,  noble  gentlemen, 
to  whom  a  delicate  courtesy  was  an  instinct ; 
but,  constitutionally,  the  spirit  which  I  am 
broadly  describing  does  not  specially  care  for 
what  is  charming,  graceful,  picturesque  in 
society.  The  dainty  humor,  the  choice  epi- 
gram, the  sparkling  persiflage  of  the  salon 
are  not  at  all  within  its  sphere.  It  is  so 
essentially  predetermined  to  great  ideas,  and 
majestical  purposes,  that  these  things  appear 
to  it  slight,  evanescent,  of  no  real  account. 
Its  very  wit  is  sharp,  if  not  saturnine,  has  a 
gleaming  edge,  and  is  meant  to  serve  practical 
uses.  And  toward  the  pleasant  enjoyments  of 
life  it  is  apt  to  take  an  attitude  almost  cynical, 
in  which  there  is  both  folly  and  peril. 

Not  everything  is  true,  we  know,  which  has 
been  said  of  it  in  this  regard.  Household 
pleasures  have  been  familiar  and  delightful  in 
Puritan  families.  The  Thanksgiving  festival, 
—  a  kind  of  secular  Christmas,  —  now  happily 


30  Clje  puritan 


naturalized  throughout  the  land,  has  been  one 
of  the  products  of  the  Puritan  spirit,  rising  like 
a  majestic  date-palm  from  amid  the  gleaming 
ice  of  New  England.  But  certainly  its  con- 
ception of  life  on  the  earth  has  always  been 
that  of  a  battle  and  a  march,  under  watchful 
heavens,  toward  superlative  issues,  with  great 
destinies  involved.  And  so  disdain  of  the 
soft  and  pleasant  things  in  life  has  never  been 
unnatural  to  it.  It  fears  in  them  a  subtle 
seduction  from  nobler  aims,  perhaps  sometimes 
suspects  this  where  it  does  not  exist  ;  and  for 
itself,  it  would  be  always  girded  and  armed,  and 
shod  with  swift  sandals,  for  righteous  strife. 

Of  course  there  is  much  in  this  which,  to 
the  general  feeling  of  the  world,  is  wholly 
unlovely  ;  and  there  is  much,  it  may  not  be 
denied,  which  involves  a  positive  moral  danger. 
For  pleasure,  so  it  be  innocent  in  itself,  is  not 
a  mere  sedative  or  emollient  to  the  spirit.  It 
is  absolutely  re-creative,  as  the  very  word  "  rec- 
reation "  implies.  Within  reasonable  limits, 
it  is  that  which  keeps  the  moral  temper  sound 
and  sweet,  which  refreshes  the  will  when  it  is 
weary,  and  reinforces  it  for  invigorated  action, 
making  the  face  of  the  sternest  man  to  beam 


puritan  Spirit  31 


and  shine  with  a  radiance  from  within.  Any 
ascetic  intolerance  of  true  pleasure,  or  any 
habitual  indifference  to  it,  tends  to  moodiness, 
or  even  morbidness,  of  mind.  It  tends  to 
self-isolation  from  a  world  whose  playfulness 
and  whose  pleasantness  are  distrusted  ;  from  a 
world  which  is  regarded  as  one  to  be  refused 
and  conquered,  not  to  be  enjoyed.  It  has 
tended,  indeed,  sometimes  at  least,  to  worse 
effects  still,  to  a  wild  and  fierce  license,  coming 
in  reaction  from  it,  and  as  a  final  alternative 
to  it.  It  is  not  monasticism  alone  which  has 
shown  these  effects.  There  are  passages  in  the 
history  of  Puritan  families  which  almost  luridly 
illustrate  the  same.  The  modern  gay  insolence 
of  youth  was  of  course  never  tolerated  in  the 
Puritan  society,  even  when  it  took  much  milder 
forms  than  that  which  angered  the  ancient 
bears.  But  sometimes,  also,  the  glad  and 
comely  pleasure  of  youth  was  too  little  re- 
garded, was  too  sternly  repressed.  The  effort 
to  expel  nature  with  pitchforks  is  not  often 
successful.  One  may,  perhaps,  cap  a  geyser 
with  stone,  but  look  out  then  for  more  formid- 
able jets  !  And  it  is  a  fact  which  has  philoso- 
phy in  it,  that  the  most  reckless  profligates 


32  €fje  puritan 


whom  our  history  has  known  have  come,  some- 
times, from  the  saintliest  and  the  most  scrupu- 
lous households. 

Another  defect  is  still  more  vital:  that 
mindsque  g  toward  the  more  delicate  sensibilities  of  the 
soul,  especially  as  they  appear  in  minds  dis- 
turbed, unsettled,  and  questioning,  and  in 
hearts  reaching  tenderly  forth  for  stimulation 
or  solace,  there  is  often  a  lack  of  affectionate 
sympathy  in  the  Puritan  spirit.  There  is  even 
sometimes  a  hard  and  oppressive  intolerance 
toward  such. 

Certain  great  ideas  have  authority  for  that 
spirit,  and  it  feels  and  declares  that  they  should 
have  for  all.  The  immutable  laws  of  right- 
eousness must  go  on,  though  a  million  hearts 
are  bruised  before  them.  There  is,  not  unfre- 
quently,  among  minds  which  are  not  of  the 
finer  and  superior  order,  a  prodigious  confi- 
dence in  purely  logical  processes,  as  availing 
to  solve  the  highest  problems  which  can  be 
presented  to  human  thought.  Even  the  Cam- 
bridge Platonists,  with  their  sympathizers  at 
Oxford,  were  regarded  in  their  time,  and  have 
been  regarded  since  by  the  commoner  minds, 
with  a  certain  disfavor,  though  the  honored 


puritan  Spirit  33 


name  of  Emmanuel  College  was  above  them. 
The  spiritual  intuition  of  truth,  the  sublime 
views  of  it  which  appeal  immediately  to  a 
spirit  in  holy  fellowship  with  God,  are  apt  to 
command  too  little  respect  from  the  downright 
and  practical  Puritan  mind.  An  inference,  to 
that  mind,  is  as  certain  as  a  vision.  It  sees  no 
shading,  and  tolerates  no  internal  hesitation. 
"  Logic  is  logic.  That's  what  I  say"  —  as  in 
the  wonderful  "  one-horse  shay." 

There  is  at  times,  no  doubt,  something 
hard,  imperious,  dictatorial,  in  this  spirit.  It 
is  not  as  sensitively  gentle  and  responsive,  as 
discerning  and  patient,  toward  diffident  souls 
as  was  that  of  the  Master.  It  repeats  his 
denunciatory  words  toward  the  strong  and  the 
haughty,  more  easily  than  his  affectionate 
ministry  to  the  questioning  and  the  sad.  It 
catches  the  roll  of  the  thunder  from  Sinai,  and 
makes  it  reverberate  over  the  centuries,  more 
readily  than  it  adapts  itself  to  the  loftier  office 
of  wiping  all  tears  from  every  eye. 

One  of  the  most  striking  modern  instances 
of  this  spirit,  among  literary  men,  has  been  in 
Carlyle,  who  did  not  accept  many  Puritan  doc- 
trines, but  whose  Scotch  blood  seethed  with  its 


34  €fje  puritan 


temper  in  every  microscopic  globule  ;  and  in 
whom  sternness,  rather  than  sweetness,  was 
certainly  the  prevailing  trait.  Sarcastic  jeers 
at  human  infirmity  were  oftener  on  his  lips 
than  words  of  compassionate  sympathy  with 
it.  A  nation,  to  him,  was  "  of  forty  millions, 
mostly  fools."  And  while  multitudes  of  minds 
have  been  seized  and  stirred  by  his  well-nigh 
prophetic  words,  as  by  almost  no  others  spoken 
in  our  time,  a  sad  soul,  teased  with  question- 
ings, troubled  and  tremulous  in  anxious  solici- 
tudes, crying  like  a  child  in  the  night  for 
help,  would  hardly  conceivably  have  gone  to 
him.  In  a  lonely  grief  any  one  of  us  would, 
I  am  sure,  have  appealed  far  sooner  to  men 
with  not  a  tithe  of  his  terrible  genius. 

In  more  or  less  distinctness,  we  see  the  same 
thing  widely  in  history.  The  Puritan  temper  is 
strong  and  stalwart.  It  grasps  great  themes, 
confronts  great  oppositions,  and  reckons  with 
great  issues  ;  but  it  is  not  essentially  gentle, 
tolerant,  sympathetic,  tender,  intent  upon  lead- 
ing men  with  delicate  hand  out  of  tangles  of 
doubt,  out  of  weakness  and  fear  into  spiritual 
tranquillity,  out  of  sadness  into  peace.  It  is 
too  affirmative  to  be  wholly  sympathetic  ;  too 


€l)e  puritan  Spirit  35 

surely  related,  in  its  intense  consciousness,  to 
the  supreme  circles  of  the  universe,  to  regard 
as  it  ought  the  weary  and  timid  and  half- 
despondent.  So  multitudes  of  men  resent 
and  hate  it.  They  scoff  at  and  scout  it,  and 
would  put  it,  if  they  could,  in  a  perpetual 
pillory  of  history. 

Mrs.  Stowe  has  touched  this,  again  and 
again,  with  her  unsurpassed  delicacy  and 
strength,  in  some  of  her  sketches  of  New  Eng- 
land life.  Perhaps  no  one  of  us,  in  whose  veins 
flows  the  blood  of  the  early  immigration,  could 
go  back  to  the  start  in  his  family  history  without 
finding  examples.  The  sensitive  minds,  the 
minds  in  which  the  moral  dominated  the  logi- 
cal, —  the  imaginative,  and  especially  the  femi- 
nine minds,  —  were  often  oppressed  with  terri- 
fic self-questionings,  in  the  shade  of  the  woods, 
in  the  comparative  loneliness  of  life  and  its 
austere  stillness  under  the  solemn  and  silent 
stars,  and  in  face-to-face  view  of  the  mystery 
of  the  future.  An  introverted  thought  started 
surmisings  which  it  could  not  silence  and 
could  not  expel  ;  and  Satanic  suggestions 
seemed  sometimes  impalpably  to  lurk  amid 
the  shifting  and  darkling  shadows  of  un- 


36  €f)e  puritan 


tracked  woods.  The  cases  were  certainly 
not  uncommon,  in  which  no  ministry,  save  of 
logical  deductions  from  what  were  esteemed 
theological  principia,  was  addressed  to  such 
minds  ;  in  which,  indeed,  their  suffering  lasted, 
sometimes  deepening  into  utter  despondency, 
till  cleared  and  dispersed  in  the  supreme 
illumination  of  death.  I  do  not  hold  the  Puri- 
tan temper  directly,  or  certainly  universally, 
responsible  for  this ;  but  it  has  a  defect  in 
this  direction  which  no  fair  mind  will  forget 
or  conceal, 
vi  But  if  such  are  its  deficiencies,  which  we 

MAGNIFICENT  i   •  i        i  r  1*1  i 

QUALITIES  OF  may  not  hide,  let  us  not  forget  that  it  has  also 

THE  PURITAN  .  .  r  ...  -  .       . 

SPIRIT  certain  magnificent  qualities  and  superlative 
traits,  which  surely  we  ought,  as  well,  to 
recognize.  In  times  of  great  trial,  amid  the 
tremendous  emergencies  of  affairs,  these  are 
certain  to  appear. 

A  masterful  It  has,  for  one  thing,  a  masterful  sincerity. 
If  any  fineness  of  literary  form  is  not  a  matter 
of  importance  to  the  Puritan,  as  it  usually  is 
not ;  if  he  fails  to  appreciate  the  subtle  charm 
of  modulated  sentences,  the  finished  luster  of 
choice  aphorisms,  or  the  iridescent  interplay 
of  humor,  this  splendid  and  powerful  grace  of 
sincerity  belongs  to  his  temper,  and  gives  it 


Cfje  puritan  Spirit  37 

a  dignity  impossible  otherwise.  Men  may 
charge  him  with  sternness,  and  with  being  too 
little  regardful  of  others ;  but  he  is  not  apt  to 
be  temporizing  in  policy,  ambiguous  or  diplo- 
matic in  forms  of  expression.  Naturally  his 
spirit  hates  the  stucco  which  would  represent 
stone ;  and  while  it  will  not  be  anxious, 
perhaps,  to  gild  iron  columns,  or  to  crown 
them  with  acanthus  leaves,  it  will  insist  on  their 
being  iron,  and  not  a  frame  of  painted  wood. 

I  do  not  think  men  can  anywhere  be  found 
whose  words  have  squared  more  absolutely 
with  their  convictions  than  did  those  of  the 
Puritans  of  England  toward  king  and  prelate  ; 
than  have  those  of  many  on  this  side  of  the 
ocean,  in  whom  was  the  original  Puritan 
temper,  who  have  set  forth  conclusions  sure  at 
once  to  be  violently  assailed.  Sincerity,  at 
least,  has  been  in  the  utterance  —  such  sincer- 
ity as  Ruskin  long  ago  eloquently  expounded 
as  a  characteristic  condition  and  element  of  all 
great  art ;  a  sincerity  which,  as  he  says,  "  rules 
invention  with  a  rod  of  iron  ;  which  subdues 
all  powers,  impulses,  imaginations,  to  the 
arbitrament  of  a  merciless  justice,  and  the 
obedience  of  an  incorruptible  verity." 


38  €lje  f&uritan  Spirit 

It  is  a  characteristic  not  of  great  art  alone, 
but  of  all  great  life  —  this  majestic  sincerity, 
which  means  what  it  says  ;  which  does  not 
evade  and  does  not  equivocate  ;  which  gives 
weight  to  words,  simplicity  and  impressiveness 
to  all  forms  of  action ;  and  which  makes  the 
longest  uncouth  sentences  that  ever  were 
heard  from  a  Puritan  pulpit  reverberate  with 
the  tone  of  personal  earnestness,  as  with  music 
of  deepest  bells.  The  Puritan  statesmanship 
is  apt  to  be  candid.  The  Puritan  laws  are  sure 
to  have  penalties ;  and  if  Puritan  thought  has 
the  impulse  and  the  power  to  wreak  itself  on 
expression  in  the  true  poetic  form,  it  makes  the 
poetry  glowing  and  incandescent,  shot  through 
with  the  singular  heat  and  splendor  of  an 
upright  and  fervent  soul.  For  myself,  I  would 
rather  there  were  less  of  elegance  and  more  of 
sincerity  in  letters  and  in  life,  wherever  the 
English  tongue  is  spoken.  If  that  is  a  con- 
summation not  reached  in  our  time,  it  will 
certainly  not  be  because  the  dauntless  Puritan 
temper  has  not  distinctly  assisted  toward  it. 
fdetimajestic  Still  further,  too,  if  fancy  is  not  active  in  the 
Puritan  on  lighter  themes,  he  has  before  his 
mind  a  majestic  ideal,  of  a  universal  kingdom 


€f)e  puritan  Spirit  39 

of  righteousness  and  truth,  which  is  to  include 
all  human  society,  and  to  shape  that  society 
by  its  supreme  laws. 

This  is  essentially  the  grandest  ideal  ever 
recognized  in  the  world ;  with  which  no  other 
may  be  compared.  The  aim  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  of  the  Napoleonic,  of  the  Russian, 
or  of  the  British,  has  been  simply  limited  and 
gross  in  comparison.  It  passes  all  other 
schemes  of  mankind,  as  opalescent  mountain 
masses,  seen  from  some  fortunate  coigne  of 
vantage,  surpass  the  cabins  and  villages  about 
them.  It  has  appealed,  with  a  supreme 
summons,  to  greatest  spirits.  A  refrain  from 
it  was  in  Dante's  song,  and  in  Milton's.  It 
is  older  far  than  the  vision  of  John  in  the 
Apocalypse.  A  light  from  it  gleamed  upon 
the  Hebrew  economy.  It  was  this,  and 
nothing  else,  which  the  early  colonists  hoped 
and  strove  to  realize  here,  in  their  narrow  and 
stern  surroundings.  It  is  this  which  their 
descendants  are  striving  to-day  to  further  and 
assist,  in  their  costly  and  cosmical  missionary 
work. 

It  is  impressive  to  see  how,  in  the  early 
New  England,  when  the  distances  were  great, 


40  Cfte  puritan 


the  surfaces  desolate,  when  churches  were 
bleak  and  services  austere,  and  when  the 
Bay  psalm-book  marked  the  only  troubadour 
period  in  the  unadorned  annals,  this  vision  of 
the  future,  in  its  superlative  moral  beauty, 
was  the  constant  poem  both  of  house  and  of 
church.  Wheresoever  it  appeared,  and  left 
its  luster  on  the  life  in  the  wilderness,  it 
appeared,  as  it  still  appears  to  us  looking  back, 
an  illuminating  ideal,  impelling  to  the  noblest 
endeavors,  lifting  the  spirit  toward  highest 
levels,  rounding  the  confused  and  noisy 
history  of  the  time  and  of  the  world  with  "  a 
sevenfold  chorus  of  hallelujahs  and  harping 
symphonies."  No  other  fact  is  more  charac- 
teristic of  the  Puritan  spirit,  and  none,  I  think, 
is  more  significant  or  more  impressive  in  any 
/  exhibition  of  human  temper. 
3.  A  superb  and  '  It  is  certainly  to  be  said,  too,  that  if  the 

shining    courage 

Puritan  spirit  is  not  naturally  strong  on  the 
side  of  moral  tenderness,  it  has  a  superb  and 
shining  courage,  as  well  as  a  capacity  for 
tremendous  enthusiasm,  and  for  a  self-devotion 
conspicuous  and  complete.  It  is  not  afraid 
of  what  man  can  do,  so  long  as  it  feels  that 
God  and  his  righteousness  are  on  its  side. 


puritan  Spirit  41 


It  has  been  frankly  and  gladly  ready  to  face 
not  only  the  fierce  charge  of  cavaliers,  but 
loneliness,  exile,  the  sea  and  the  wilderness, 
the  unknown  perils  of  a  soil  and  an  air  which 
civilization  had  not  tried,  the  cruel  craft  of 
savage  enemies.  It  has  gone  out  from  happy 
homes  for  this,  and  from  lovely  surroundings, 
and  has  not  flinched  before  the  hazard  and 
life-long  loss,  any  more  than  it  had  flinched 
before  the  frowning  face  of  kings. 

It  has  in  it  a  fortitude  which  is  nobler  than 
bravery,  as  the  current  of  the  stream  is  might- 
ier in  momentum  than  the  sparkles  which  flash 
and  foam  on  its  surface.  Such  fortitude  belongs 
to  the  convictions  behind  it.  It  is  essentially 
involved  in  the  assurance  of  God,  of  an  imper- 
ative  righteousness,  of  the  universe  as  one  in 
which  the  moral  order  is  supreme,  and  of  the 
immortality  in  which  that  order  shall  be  regnant 
and  eternal.  So  it  can  not  give  way,  any  more 
than  the  rock  can  before  arrows  or  winds  or 
the  leap  of  wild  beasts.  Whoever  has  a  true 
Puritan  behind  him,  in  any  stress  of  contention 
and  struggle,  may  know  that  there  is  one  on 
whose  succor  and  support  he  can  steadfastly 
depend.  A  law  of  nature  is  scarcely  less  muta- 


stitutions 


42  €fje  puritan  Spirit 

ble.     The  poise  of  the  planet  is  hardly  more 
constant.     "The  Guard  may  die,  but  it  never 
surrenders." 
4.  A  triumphant       And  yet  further  :  if  this  spirit  has  often  too 

disregard   ol    in-  »  *• 

little  regard  for  perplexed  and  suffering  indi- 
vidual souls,  it  has  also  a  triumphant  disregard 
of  institutions,  however  mighty,  however  an- 
cient, if  they  are  not  characterized  by  what  it 
apprehends  as  a  divine  righteousness,  and  are 
not  ready  to  submit  to  and  to  serve  that. 

It  is  this  which  has  brought  this  imperative 
temper  constantly  into  conflict  with  such  insti- 
tutions, and  has  made  it  seem  often  only  ruth- 
lessly destructive.  It  has  in  fact  been  tearing 
down,  to  build  up  on  what  it  could  not  but  hold 
to  be  nobler  lines.  Church  hierarchies,  state 
aristocracies,  institutions  of  royalty  or  of  em- 
pire, have  been  nothing  to  it,  except  as  related 
to  the  supreme  ends  of  God's  righteous  king- 
dom. Miters  and  scepters  have  been  paltry 
baubles  before  the  intensity  of  its  convictions. 
Pontifical  thrones  have  seemed  mere  offensive 
obstructions  in  its  path,  to  be  swept  away  as 
the  cannon  fire  sweeps  away  earthworks  and 
abattis  before  the  shouting  onset  of  an  army. 
Even  majority-votes,  which  to  the  American 
mind  seem  to  be  specially  hedged  with  divin- 


Cfje  puritan  Spirit 


43 


ity,  are  hay  and  stubble   before    its   intensity. 

is  its  fnnr|ampr>^l  ^w        •, 


It  expects  to  continue  in  the  minority,  till  the 
earth  has  been  renewed  to  the  righteousness  of 
God ;  and  it  is  ready  to  wait  for  vindication  and 
victory  in  the  ages  of  larger  light  to  come. 
It  is  essentially  an  innovating  and  a  pioneer 
temper,  aggressive  and  resolute  for  whatever 
may  lift  society  forward,  toward  superior  levels, 
more  generous  times.  As  it  formerly  met  pain 
and  persecution,  without  complaint  and  without 
reserve,  so  now  it  meets  an  adverse  vote.  As 
it  denounced  prelates  aforetime,  and  set  its 
foot  on  the  neck  of  kings,  so  now  it  attacks 
any  interest  of  society,  or  any  organized  insti- 
tution, which  seems  to  it  opposed  to  righteous- 
ness ;  and  it  is  never  to  be  satisfied  till  such  an 
institution  has  been  overthrown.  "  First  pure, 
then  peaceable,"  is  its  favorite  maxim ;  and  the 
terrible  strength  of  an  intense  purpose  is 
always  behind  its  moral  attack. 

It  needs  the  guidance  of  highest  wisdom, 
and  may  well  offer  the  considerate  prayer  of 
the  Scotch  divine,  "  Be  pleased,  O  Lord,  to 
guide  us  aright :  for  thou  knowest  that, 
whether  we  be  right  or  wrong,  we  be  very 


44  €fje  puritan  Spirit 

determined."  But  no  man  can  make  or  face 
an  issue  with  this  Puritan  spirit  without  doing 
well  to  count  beforehand  the  cost.  I  see  the 
danger  involved  at  this  point ;  but  I  see,  as 
well,  the  temper  which  has  rectified  a  thousand 
intrenched  and  haughty  abuses,  and  has  made 
the  world  far  lovelier  to  live  in  ;  and  I  will  not 
forget  the  lowly  graves  from  which  it  has 
sprung,  when  enjoying  the  harvest  of  our  more 
free  and  fruitful  society. 

Yet  one  tmn£  more-  If  the  Puritan  spirit  is 
comparatively  careless  of  pleasant  things  on 
earth,  and  is  apt  to  fear  them  as  too  dangerous 
allurements,  it  has  the  clearest  and  surest  vision 
of  things  celestial,  and  draws  from  them  solace 
and  strength,  and  high  inspiration. 

It  is  not  a  temper  which  works  for  wages. 
Men  have  heaped  all  manner  of  scorn  upon  it 
for  maintaining,  here  and  there,  that  a  man 
should  be  willing  to  be  damned  in  order  to  be 
saved.  I  admit  the  justice  of  much  which  has 
been  said.  No  test  of  that  unscriptural  sort, 
fabricated  by  metaphysical  logic,  ought  ever  to 
be  presented ;  and  this  one  is  offensive  in 
many  special  ways.  It  is  not  even  harmless, 
as  the  man  thought  the  end  of  the  thermome- 


puritan  Spirit  45 


ter  might  be,  which  he  had  bitten  off  and 
swallowed  when  it  was  testing  his  temperature, 
though  he  could  not  perceive  that  it  was  doing 
him  any  good.  A  test  like  this  famous  one 
dishonors  God,  by  assuming  that  he  can  be 
willing  to  condemn  one  who  seeks  to  turn  in 
penitence  to  him  ;  and  it  confuses  and  bewilders 
the  mind  which  is  reaching  after  him  in  the 
person  of  his  Son.  It  is  justly  repulsive  to 
modern  thought,  and  it  never  was  favored  by 
any  large  number  of  even  the  exacting  Puritan 
divines.  But  it  must  be  remembered,  in  abso- 
lute justice,  that  it  represented  precisely  the 
state  and  attitude  of  mind  in  those  who  first 
proposed  it  as  a  question  ;  and  that  never  until 
one  does  not  care  what  may  happen,  in  this 
world  or  the  next,  so  long  as  he  does  right,  is 
he  finally  and  utterly  free  of  the  Universe,  with 
all  his  powers  in  perfect  poise  and  grandest 
play.  If  righteousness  required  it,  and  the 
glory  of  God  under  the  gospel,  they  who 
offered  this  test  were  willing  to  face  infernal 
fires  ;  and  they  felt  that  others  should  be  so 
too.  Their  primary  error  undoubtedly  was  in 
transferring  a  transcendent,  an  almost  superhu- 
man attitude  of  mind,  to  the  beginnings  of 


46  €fje  puritan 


Christian  experience  ;  in  requiring  from  the 
babe  in  Christ  what  might  possibly,  at  least  in 
exceptional  cases,  have  been  accepted  by  the 
sublimely  impassioned  missionary  or  martyr. 
But  while  such  absolute  submission  to  God 
has  been  encouraged,  and  been  even  required, 
the  Puritan  thought  has  always  been  fixed  on 
the  supreme  and  celestial  results  of  a  divine 
life  upon  the  earth,  and  has  kept  before  it  the 
radiant  consummation  of  the  eternal  plan  of  the 
Most  High.  The  Apocalypse  has  been  to  it 
the  favorite  book  of  all  the  Scriptures.  The 
sunset-splendor  has  been  no  more  evident  to 
the  physical  eye  than  the  Heavenly  City  has 
been  to  the  heart.  The  Cross  of  Christ  has 
been  interpreted  by  its  relation  to  those  issues 
of  life  beyond  all  compass  of  human  thought  ; 
and  the  mission  of  the  Comforter  has  been  felt 
to  be  to  bring  an  earnest  of  wisdom  and  love, 
of  spiritual  peace  and  of  holy  power,  only 
fully  attainable  in  the  illustrious  sphere  of  the 
immortals  :  as  if  blossoming  branches  had  been 
flung  from  over  the  walls  of  paradise  ;  as  if 
fragrant  odors  had  secretly  stolen  between  the 
gates.  The  earth  itself  has  become  a  sacred 
place  to  men,  with  this  high  expectation  arch- 


puritan  Spirit  47 


ing  its  bow  above  the  household,  turning  dark- 
ness to  day  in  the  dreariest  life,  and  lighting 
the  hills  and  bathing  the  sandy  or  rocky 
shores  as  in  the  up-spring  of  the  immortal 
morning  !  The  waste  and  the  wood  have  been 
to  such  only  the  wilderness  which  men  were 
taking,  as  Lady  Arbella  Johnson  was  said 
to  have  taken  New  England,  on  the  way  to 
heaven.  Over  the  rudest  letters  and  life  of  the 
early  colonies  brooded  this  ethereal  splendor. 
Their  very  funeral  hymns  throbbed  with  the 
impulse  of  the  great  expectation.  The  living 
Puritan,  like  the  dying  Stephen,  not  unfre- 
quently  saw  the  heavens  opened,  and  the  Son 
of  man  standing  on  the  right  hand  of  God  ; 
and  his  face,  too,  was  to  those  around  him  "  as 
the  face  of  an  angel." 

Ladies     and    Gentlemen,    I     have     spoken  „      ™ 

THE  PURITAN 

frankly,  with  too  great  slightness  and  rapidity  SpIRIT  CosMI' 
of  treatment,  but  with  such  a  treatment  as  the 
circumstances  of  preparation  have  allowed  me, 
of  the  elements  involved  in  the  Puritan  spirit, 
as  that  has  appeared  not  here  alone,  but  at 
large  in  history  ;  of  its  deficiencies,  or  positive 
faults,  which  even  its  admirers  have  to  recog- 
nize ;  and  of  the  sovereign  qualities  and  traits 


48  €f>e  puritan 


which  it  also  exhibits,  and  exhibits  with  most 
commanding  force  in  critical  times,  and  in 
the  front  of  great  emergency.  It  can  not  be 
needful,  then,  to  argue  that  this  temper  has 
not  been  local  or  provincial,  but  in  the  truest 
sense  cosmical  ;  not  limited  to  any  one  period 
in  history,  but  common  to  all,  and  sometimes 
appearing  most  remarkably  in  those  that  were 
most  unfriendly  to  it.  It  is  as  old  as  history  ; 
and  it  always  has  shown  itself  with  clearest 
manifestation  in  those  of  noblest  nature  and 
power,  who  have  done  the  most  memorable 
work  for  the  world.  Men  have  made  kings 
out  of  rubbish,  and  statesmen,  so  called,  out 
of  pedants  and  rogues.  They  have  tried,  at 
any  rate,  to  make  scholars  out  of  those  too 
lazy  to  work,  soldiers  out  of  padded  uniforms, 
philanthropists  out  of  cranks.  But  it  takes 
a  strong  man,  and  a  sound  one,  to  be  devel- 
oped into  a  Puritan  ;  as  men  forge  cannon  out 
of  grim  metal,  and  do  not  fashion  them  of 
papier-mache. 

Puritanism  has  its  sources  and  its  securities 
in  the  supreme  elements  of  human  nature  ; 
in  the  discerning  and  imperative  conscience, 
which  affirms  right  as  the  ultimate  law  in  the 


puritan  Spirit  49 


universe  of  mind  ;  in  the  intuitive  reason, 
which  declares  the  certitude  of  invisible  truth  ; 
in  that  divine  side  of  the  soul  which  is  in 
direct  correspondence  with  its  Author,  and 
which  sees  the  eternal  justice  and  might  on  the 
field  of  human  combat,  more  clearly  than  in 
any  roll  of  the  earthquake,  or  any  far-shining 
figures  of  the  stars.  It  has  its  strength  in 
that  commanding  will-power  which  is  ready  for  / 
effort,  endurance,  consecration,  which  finds 
opposition  an  incentive  to  achievement,  and 
before  which  resistant  forces  or  circumstances, 
whatever  they  may  be,  have  got  either  to  bend 
or  to  break.  In  these  great  powers  the 
Puritan  spirit  finds  always  its  roots  and 
reinforcements.  And,  therefore,  wherever 
these  have  been  shown,  it  has  appeared  ; 
wherever  these  are  to  be  shown  hereafter,  it 
will  appear,  till  the  earth  and  the  heavens  shall 
be  no  more. 

Moses  was  a  Puritan,  —  in  fact,  the  sublime 

Testament 

exemplar  and  type  of  the  Puritan  spirit  ;  who 
could  not  speak  in  the  phrase  of  courts,  and 
who  knew  that  he  could  not  ;  but  to  whom 
Pharaoh,  against  God,  with  whatever  chariots 
and  horsemen  and  rock-built  temples,  was  no 


50  €tje  puritan  Spirit 

more  than  a  temporary  bulrush  of  the  Nile 
against  atmospheres  and  suns;  to  whom  the 
law  of  righteousness,  the  kingdom  of  the 
Holiest,  the  divine  intervention  for  the  guidance 
of  his  people,  were  as  fleecy  clouds,  inlaid  with 
fire,  moving  before  him  to  lead  the  way  and 
burnish  the  stern  and  rocky  path ;  who  was 
just  as  strong  against  popular  rebellion  as  he 
had  been  against  imperial  threat ;  who  bowed 
submissively  to  that  divine  will  which  sent  him 
to  die  alone  upon  Nebo,  and  whom  God 
buried  in  that  austere  and  lonely  funeral,  the 
most  majestic  of  time.  It  has  been  by  reason 
of  his  indomitable  Puritan  temper,  touched 
of  God,  that  Moses  has  towered  in  colossal 
proportions,  before  all  generations;  so  that,  as 
Theodore  Parker  said  of  him,  "  His  name  is 
plowed  into  the  history  of  the  world,  and  his 
influence  never  can  die." 

Hezekiah  was  a  Puritan,  no  one  can  doubt, 
whatever  temporary  weaknesses  he  showed  :  who 
reconsecrated  the  defiled  temple ;  who  swept 
away,  with  besom  of  fire,  the  lovely  high  places 
in  which  lust  was  taking  on  it  the  semblance  and 
the  sanctions  of  worship  ;  who  broke  in  pieces 
the  brazen  serpent,  in  the  most  daring  and 


puritan  Spirit  51 


splendid  iconoclasm  which  the  world  has  seen, 
calling  it  in  contempt  "  Nehushtan  "  —  a  piece 
of  brass. 

Daniel  was  a  Puritan,  as  well  as  a  statesman 
and  a  seer  :  in  the  face  of  presidents,  princes, 
and  the  king,  when  the  decree  had  gone  forth 
against  prayer,  before  watchful  eyes,  and  with 
the  fierceness  of  lions  near,  going  into  his 
chamber,  with  its  windows  opened  toward 
Jerusalem,  and  three  times  a  day  kneeling, 
praying,  and  giving  thanks,  "  as  he  did  afore- 
time." 

Jeremiah  was  a  Puritan  :  with  rough  raiment, 
ascetic  habit,  hated  by  people,  priests,  and 
kings,  flung  into  prison,  eating  bread  of 
affliction,  and  with  tears  for  his  drink,  yet 
standing  against  wickedness  like  a  brazen  wall  ; 
with  a  faith  unfailing  buying  the  field  on 
which  the  invading  host  was  encamped,  to 
demonstrate  his  certainty  that  again  it  should 
be  possessed  by  Israel  ;  his  life  a  long  martyr- 
dom, his  death,  perhaps,  a  furious  murder  ;  yet 
bearing  witness  always,  without  impatience, 
but  with  no  bated  breath,  to  the  truth  of  the 
Most  High.  One  does  not  wonder  that  so 
many  of  the  devout  among  our  own  Puritans 


52  €f)e  puritan  Spirit 

sought   a   chrism   of    his     majestic     spirit,    in 
naming  after  him  their  precious  firstborn. 

In  fact,  to  state  it  in  a  word,  the  whole 
Old  Testament  is  vital  and  commanding  with 
the  examples  of  the  Puritan  spirit.  It  is  not 
here  and  there,  alone  ;  it  breaks  to  light  at 
multitudinous  points,  as  the  sunshine  through 
vapors,  as  the  silver-gleams  through  all  rifts 
of  the  rock  in  the  wealthy  mine.  It  was 
this  which  made  the  venerable  Testament 
so  dear  to  our  fathers,  and  so  familiar.  We 
read  it,  perhaps,  with  daintier  and  reluctant 
eyes.  But  they,  with  their  more  virile  tem- 
per, their  experience  of  hardship,  in  their 
secluded  homes  in  the  wilderness,  saw  in  the 
ancient  Testament  not  history  only,  theology, 
or  praise,  but  the  glory  of  man  reflecting  and 
celebrating  the  glory  of  God.  It  was  a  Script- 
ure in  life  which  smote  and  stirred  their  strong 
emotion.  Not  merely  as  to  Deborah  under 
the  palm-tree,  or  to  Ezekiel  by  the  river  of 
Chebar,  was  the  majesty  of  the  Eternal  mani- 
fest to  them.  The  whole  Hebrew  economy 
bore  its  radiance,  and  declared  its  effect ;  an 
economy  stern,  sublime,  working  for  freedom 
because  binding  to  God  ;  training  men  to  be 


puritan  Spirit  53 


careless  of  the  world  and  its  lusts,  that  they 
might  be  champions  for  the  kingdom  unseen. 
This  was  the  lambent  cloud  of  glory  which 
filled  all  Puritan  temples  when  the  ancient 
Scriptures  were  opened  within  them.  This 
made  a  presence-chamber  of  the  Infinite  in 
each  Puritan  home. 

We  may  not  say  that  the  Master  was  a 
Puritan,  any  more  than  we  may  apply  to  him 
any  other  of  the  special  and  divisional  names 
known  among  men,  his  spirit  being  wholly 
sublimed  and  complete  in  perfect  wisdom  and 
perfect  love.  But  this  energetic  and  mag- 
nificent element  was  certainly  in  him,  as  shown 
by  his  attitude  toward  Pharisees  and  rulers, 
by  his  magisterial  declarations  of  truth,  and 
his  terrific  predictions  of  the  judgment  to 
come.  The  Puritan  has  never  found  anything 
hostile  in  the  temper  of  Christ,  though  he 
might  sometimes  have  been  attuned  by  that 
temper  to  a  more  benignant  and  winning 
grace. 

In  John  the  same  strong  element  appears, 
with  all  his  temper  of  mystical  love,  and  that 
lofty  spiritual  intuition  of  truth  which  has 
made  his  Gospel  a  source  of  perpetual  wonder 


54  Cfje  puritan 


and  delight  to  all  sympathetic  and  lofty  minds. 
His  first  Epistle  is  alive  with  its  power  ; 
and  it  was  an  unswerving  Puritan  hand  which 
traced  the  terrible  crash  of  conflict  in  which 
righteousness  conquers,  and  empires  go  down, 
till  out  of  heaven  descends  in  triumph  the  city 
of  God. 

Paul  was  a  Puritan,  par  eminence,  in  his  view 
of  truth  and  in  his  practical  temper,  in  his 
hardihood  of  will  and  his  vehement  affirma- 
tions, and  in  his  magnetic  readiness  for  battle, 
on  behalf  of  the  convictions  at  which  the  Greek 
laughed  and  the  Jew  was  enraged.  Wherever 
this  spirit  has  appeared  in  the  world,  since  his 
head  fell  on  the  Ostian  road,  it  has  turned 
instinctively  to  his  Epistles  for  instruction  and 
incitement.  His  spirit  has  spoken  in  all  the 
words  which  have  smitten  like  cannon-shot 
upon  powerful  abuses. 

fcsto^ecular  Outside,  altogether,  of  the  Biblical  history, 
such  examples  appear.  Men  speak  sometimes 
as  if  this  spirit  had  been  peculiar,  or  at  least 
most  familiar,  to  those  of  the  Hebrew  times 
and  training,  or,  in  modern  years,  to  those, 
perhaps,  of  the  English  stock.  Not  at  all.  It 
belongs,  as  I  have  said,  to  the  strong  forces 


€lje  puritan  Spirit  55 

of  human  nature,  and  has  appeared,  therefore, 
wherever  these  have  vitally  emerged ;  among 
those  of  Hellenic  or  Romanic  lineage,  of 
Gothic  or  of  Celtic,  as  signally  and  impressively 
as  anywhere  else.  It  is,  in  fact,  everywhere 
apparent  in  history,  as  one  traces  the  glistening 
metallic  threads  in  an  ancient  tapestry,  which 
impart  to  it  of  their  strength  as  well  as  of 
their  sheen,  and,  while  adding  to  its  luster, 
preserve  it  from  being  torn  apart.  One  can 
not  imagine  Rameses  a  Puritan  :  the  haughty 
Egyptian,  who  knew  not  Joseph,  who  made  the 
life  of  the  Hebrews  the  cement  of  his  walls, 
and  whom  the  charming  Miss  Edwards  pur- 
sues with  her  delightful  persistency  of  scorn  for 
his  sins  against  the  monuments.  Yet  to  one 
who  has  any  faith  whatever  in  physiognomical 
indications,  it  is  startling  to  see  how  his  kingly 
face,  reappearing  from  the  mummy-folds  of 
three  thousand  years,  seems  to  prophesy  the 
face,  set  and  stern,  with  a  deep  trace  of  sadness 
in  it,  of  the  hardest-thinking  New  England 
farmer,  looking  out  from  his  windy  hill-side  on 
the  solemn  problems  of  life  and  of  the  world. 
But  Aristides  was  unmistakably  a  Puritan, 
whom  Plato  eulogized  as  having  righteously 


56  Cf)e  puritan 


fulfilled  his  trust:  unsurpassed  in  justice,  os- 
tracized on  account  of  it  ;  holding  high  office, 
commanding  armies  skillfully  and  bravely,  not 
leaving  enough  of  worldly  wealth  to  pay  for 
his  funeral.  The  magnificent  statue  in  the 
Museum  at  Naples,  supposed  to  be  of  him, 
remains  in  my  thought,  and  I  doubt  not  in 
the  thought  of  many  others  present,  as  one  of 
the  grandest  embodiments  ever  made,  in 
yielding  and  responsive  stone,  of  high  intel- 
lectual dignity  and  power,  with  a  moral 
elevation  unsurpassed  among  men.  Pericles 
was  distinctly  not  a  Puritan,  though  a  far- 
sighted  statesman  and  an  eloquent  orator  ; 
fortifying  Athens,  giving  magnificent  impulse 
to  art,  and  setting  the  shining  diadem  of  the 
Parthenon  on  the  brow  of  the  queenliest  city 
of  Time. 

Epictetus  was  a  Puritan  :  the  freed  slave 
who  felt  himself  in  relationship  with  God  and 
with  the  universe  ;  to  whom  palaces  and 
emperors  were  a  trivial  pageant  ;  who  was 
consciously  here  on  a  divine  errand  ;  who  felt 
the  touch  of  the  Over-soul  upon  him  ;  whose 
maxim  was  to  "  suffer  and  abstain."  Cicero 
was  not,  in  spite  of  his  high  and  attractive 


Cfje  puritan  Spirit  57 

speculation,  his  elaborate  eloquence,  his 
dazzling  accomplishments,  perhaps  never  sur- 
passed among  men. 

In  his  theory  of  life,  Marcus    Aurelius    had 
strong  Puritanical   tendencies,  as    had   all   the 
nobler    and     wiser     stoics  —  Seneca     himself,  \ 
in  his  ethical  writings.     The  Epicureans  were 
always  at  the  opposite  extreme. 

How  often  the  same  temper  has  appeared 
in  the  Church,  from  the  first  age  to  the  present, 
I  need  not  remind  you. 

Basil  was  an  illustrious  Puritan,  though  of 
sensitive  genius  and  an  admirable  culture  :  who 
enjoined  the  three  peremptory  vows  of  poverty, 
chastity,  and  obedience  ;  who  feared  not  the 
imperial  forfeiture  of  his  property,  because  he 
had  none,  nor  any  banishment  to  inhospitable 
regions,  since  he  was  everywhere  the  guest  of 
God  ;  and  who  said,  in  practical  effect,  when 
the  brutal  deputy  in  Cappadocia  threatened 
to  cut  out  his  liver  if  he  did  not  obey  an 
offensive  order  :  "  Thanks  !  You  will  do  me 
a  favor.  Where  it  is,  it  has  bothered  me  ever 
since  I  can  remember."  There  is  the  essential 
Puritan  temper,  which  it  is  no  more  easy  to 

1  Vita  S.  Basilii,  chap,  xxxi,  v.  ep.  Greg.  Naz. 


58  €fte  puritan 


break  down  by  assault  than  to  burn  the  ^Egean, 
or  to  upset  the  Apennines. 

Athanasius  was  a  Puritan  :  ruling  councils  in 
the  interest  of  what  to  him  was  divine,  not 

with 

"  The  imperial  stature,  the  colossal  stride  " 

of  mere  titular  kings,  but  with  the  subtler  and 
mightier  force  of  a  moral  energy  which  almost 
none  could  withstand,  and  to  whom  the  impe- 
rial tyranny  which  drove  the  Church  from  Alex- 
andria was,  as  he  said,  "  a  little  cloud,  that  will 
soon  pass."  Augustine  was  another,  writing 
quietly  that  "  City  of  God,"  which  has  been  a 
favorite  in  all  generations  of  Puritan  families, 
amid  what  seemed  the  imminent  crash  of  a  fall- 
ing world. 

Hildebrand  was  a  Puritan  (Gregory  VII), 
strange  as  it  seems  :  who  strove  with  all  the 
prodigious  strength  of  genius,  devotion,  and 
unconquerable  will,  to  purify  the  Church  ac- 
cording to  his  conception  of  purity  ;  and  who 
could  honestly  say,  when  he  died  at  Salerno, 
"  I  have  loved  righteousness  and  hated  ini- 
quity :  therefore  now  I  die  in  exile."  Anselm 
was  a  Puritan  :  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
father  of  scholastic  theology,  who  would  rather 


puritan  Spirit  59 


be  a  brother  in  the  cloister  than  a  prelate  in 
the  Church  and  an  officer  of  the  realm  ;  whose 
friends  were  frightened  by  the  ascetic  severities 
of  his  life  ;  and  who  was  accustomed  to  say,  in 
the  temper  of  the  most  unrelenting  of  New 
England  divines,  that  if  he  saw  sin  on  one 
side  and  hell  on  the  other,  he  would  jump 
into  the  latter  to  escape  the  former  !  * 

Bernard  was  a  Puritan  :  who  lashed  the  lux- 
ury of  convents,  and  the  glittering  pomp  and 
pride  of  churches,  with  an  unsparing  hand  ; 
who  admonished  kings  and  pontiffs  to  think 
of  themselves  as  stripped  and  unclean  before 
the  coming  judgment  of  God  ;  who  was  an 
absolute  iconoclast  toward  pictures  and  orna- 
ments, with  the  jeweled  candelabra  which  tow- 
ered in  churches  ;  and  who  valued  the  soul  of 
the  poorest  peasant  above  all  wealth  of  royal 
treasures. 

Wycliffe,  Savonarola,  Huss,  Zwingli  —  Puri- 
tan traits  are  apparent  in  all  ;  in  the  Hugue- 
nots of  La  Rochelle  and  among  the  Cevennes  ; 
in  the  Hollanders,  pursuing  with  equal  and 

1  "  Conscientia  mea  teste  non  mentior,  quia  ssepe  ilium  sub  veritatis  testi- 
monio  profitentem  audivimus,  quoniam  si  hinc  peccati  horrorem,  hinc 
inferni  dolorem  corporaliter  cerneret,  et  necessario  uni  eorum  immergi  de- 
beret;  prius  infernum,  quam  peccatum,  appeteret."  —  Eadmer:  De  Vita  S. 
Anselmi,  lib.  ii,  16,  D. 


60  Cfje  puritan 

incomparable  faith  and  wrath  their  heroic  battle 
of  eighty  years,  for  the  land  which  they  had 
redeemed  from  the  sea,  against  Spain  and 
Rome,  and  the  fierce  Inquisition. 

I*  was  tne  same  spirit,  and  no  other,  among 
our  fathers  in  England,  which  led  them  to 
endure  persecution  there,  and  many  of  them 
to  cross  to  this  continent  of  unsubdued  forests 
and  unexplored  wastes,  to  plant  the  small  colo- 
nies which  should  be  the  foundation  of  great 
Commonwealths,  with  what  they  deemed  truth 
and  righteousness  for  their  rule.  The  true 
place  of  the  founders  of  New  England  in  the 
history  of  the  world  is  given  them  by  the  fact 
that  this  spirit  was  in  them.  We  value  them 
for  what  they  did.  We  should  honor  them 
more  for  what  they  were.  There  were  hypo- 
crites among  them.  The  common  temper  was 
not,  of  course,  equally  or  fully  exhibited  by  all. 
They  made  many  mistakes.  They  were  often, 
no  doubt,  harsh  and  unlovely.  It  is  easier, 
perhaps,  to  honor  some  of  them  now  than 
it  would  have  been  to  live  with  them  then. 
But  the  essential  and  powerful  temper  which 
had  been  in  Moses  and  in  the  prophets,  in 
Paul  and  in  Stephen,  in  illustrious  stoics  and  in 


THE   PURITAN    BY   ST.    GAUDENS 

Used   by  courtesy  of  the  CENTURY   COMPANY,   owners  of  the  copyright 


Cfje  puritan  Spirit  61 

great  builders  and  reformers  of  the  Church, 
was  also  in  them.  Because  of  it,  they  take 
their  place  among  the  morally  illustrious  of  the 
world.  They  stand  unabashed,  and  in  spirit 
undimmed,  in  the  most  illustrious  succession 
of  Time.  Because  of  it,  till  the  continent  disap- 
pears, their  fame  can  not  fail  from  the  records 
of  men.  Because  of  it,  their  holy  and  happy 
renown  will  be  immortal  on  high  !  Woe  be  to 
us,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  if  ever  we  fail  to 
remember  them  with  honor,  or  to  contem- 
plate their  part  in .  the  history  of  mankind  with 
admiration  and  a  triumphing  praise. 

A  monument  has  been  raised  to  them  at 
Plymouth,  on  a  spot  near  which  they  landed. 
It  is  wholly  fitting  that  another  be  raised,  as 
is  now,  I  learn,  proposed,  on  the  site  of  their 
departure  from  the  old  world  to  the  new.  The 
two  should  stand  as  answering  towers  —  Mar- 
tello  towers,  commemorating  hearts  that  were 
as  resonant  iron,  and  words  that  were  hammers; 
between  which  the  unfailing  wires  of  reverent 
remembrance  shall  bind  not  Delft  and  Ply- 
mouth alone,  but  all  the  hearts  fearless  of 
man,  and  steadfast  for  righteousness,  in  both 
the  continents. 


62  Cfje  puritan 


This  was  the  Puritan  temper  in  New  England 
in  the  earlier  time.  And,  really,  the  secret  of 
their  strenuous  struggle  with  Baptists  and 
e  in  early  New  Quakers  was  in  the  fact  that  in  these  they 
encountered  the  same  spirit  which  was  in 
themselves,  under  special  and  differing  forms 
of  faith  ;  so  that  it  was  fire  fighting  fire,  an 
almost  irresistible  force  striking  an  almost 
immovable  obstacle.  It  was  the  crossing  of 
blades  of  Toledo,  with  different  etchings  and 
embossings  on  hilt  and  scabbard,  but  neither 
inferior  to  the  other  in  the  temper  of  the 
steel,  or  in  the  sharpness  of  edge  and  point. 
No  wonder  that  sparks  flew  like  flashes  out 
of  surcharged  opposing  clouds,  and  that  the 
ringing  clash  of  those  unsurpassed  weapons 
still  echoes  in  history. 

The  same  indomitable  Puritan  spirit  survived 
the  early  colonial  times,  always  seeking  not  to 
decorate  life  or  to  ornament  society,  but  to 
assert  personal  freedom  under  God,  and  to 
innovate  for  righteousness,  leading  the  march 
toward  better  ages.  It  sought  always  to  lay 
foundations,  to  build  vast  walls,  and  then  was 
ready  to  leave  it  to  others  to  tone  and  color 
them,  and  set  the  pictured  glass  in  the 
windows. 


€f>e  puritan  Spirit  63 

Samuel  Adams  was  a  Puritan,  if  ever  there 
was  one  :  son  of  a  deacon  in  the  old  South 
Church  ;  carefully  trained  in  his  father's  ways  ; 
of  whom  Hutchinson  said  that,  though  he  was 
poor,  such  was  his  inflexible  disposition  that 
no  office  could  bribe  him  ;  whom  Gage 
excepted  by  name  from  his  offer  of  pardon 
to  penitent  rebels ;  who  raised  and  ruled  the 
eager  democracy  of  the  town  and  the  state, 
and  to  whom  Washington  was  no  more  than 
another,  if  he  did  not  succeed. 

Colonel  Abraham  Davenport  was  a  Puritan : 
who  sat  in  the  governor's  council  at  Hartford 
on  the  extraordinary  dark  day,  May  19,  1780, 
when  chickens  went  to  roost  in  the  morning, 
and  cattle  came  lowing  from  the  fields,  when 
a  pall  of  darkness  swept  through  the  sky  as 
if  the  sun  had  been  suddenly  extinguished, 
and  when  the  Day  of  Judgment  was  trem- 
blingly thought  to  be  at  hand.  The  House 
of  Representatives  had  already  adjourned,  and 
it  was  proposed  to  adjourn  the  council.  "The 
Day  of  Judgment  is  at  hand,"  said  the  Colonel, 
"  or  it  'is  not.  If  not,  there  is  no  occasion  for 
adjournment.  If  it  is,  I  choose  to  be  found 
doing  my  duty.  Bring  in  the  candles." 


64  €fte  puritan 


Samuel  Hopkins  was  a  Puritan  :  who 
wrought  with  the  utmost  energy  and  patience 
of  his  acute  and  laborious  mind  to  vindicate 
the  ways  of  God  to  man  ;  who,  on  behalf  of 
the  enslaved  African,  fought  that  enraged  aris- 
tocracy of  Newport  whose  splendid  wealth 
had  on  it,  to  his  eye,  the  infernal  scorch 
of  cruel  oppression  ;  and  who,  in  the  midst 
of  utmost  poverty,  held  his  spirit  aloft  in 
communion  with  God,  and  in  an  almost 
seraphic  meditation. 

7-Jn   recent  It    js    on}y    true     tQ     fae    facts     tQ    gay    fa^t    fa^ 

same  spirit  appeared  afterward  in  those  who 
differed  widely  from  his  faith,  or  from  any 
accepted  and  articulated  scheme  of  the  New 
England  fathers.  The  intensity  of  conviction, 
of  which  I  have  spoken  as  characterizing 
Puritanism,  is  an  intensity  of  individual  con- 
viction. It  may  therefore  make  comparatively 
little,  as  often  it  has  made,  of  general  creeds, 
or  of  any  systems  to  which  others  have  agreed. 
It  affirms  the  opinions  held  at  the  time  by  the 
personal  mind,  and  is  sometimes  almost  ready 
to  say,  with  the  Quaker  to  his  wife,  "  All  the 
world  seems  queer,  Sally,  except  thee  and  me  ; 
and  thee  is  a  little  so."  While  devoted,  there- 


puritan  Spirit  65 


fore,  to  its  own  conclusions,  it  can  not  escape 
the  responsibility  of  leaving  each  following 
generation  to  do  its  own  thinking,  and  to 
come  to  its  possibly  antagonizing  convictions. 
As  a  system  of  thought,  the  Puritan  element 
enters  into  alliance  with  diverse  theories.  As 
a  spirit,  it  survives  strange  vicissitudes  of 
opinion.  So  it  was  that  Unitarianism  had 
under  it  its  fair  opportunity  —  was  almost 
certain  to  appear  at  some  time,  and  with  the 
old  temper  to  try  to  project  the  new  and 
attractive  scheme  of  speculation  into  the 
thought  and  life  of  society.  Not  a  little  of 
the  spirit  which  had  preceded  him  appeared 
in  Channing,  who  had  early  learned  to  honor 
the  stoics,  and  who  had  taken  from  Hopkins 
enduring  impressions  ;  who  was  as  bold  as  he 
was  gentle,  cultured,  and  suave  ;  and  who 
faced  slavery,  in  the  Federal-street  meeting- 
house, and  in  Faneuil  Hall,  as  if  he  believed 
in  a  personal  devil,  and  that  this  was  the 
incarnation  of  him.  The  same,  too,  was  not 
unapparent  in  Buckminster,  differing  so  widely 
in  opinion  from  the  father  whose  spirit  was 
yet  ever  manifest  in  him.  It  is  not  hard  to 
trace  the  same  element  in  Emerson,  or  in 


66  €fte  puritan  Spirit 

Bushnell,  or  in  Theodore  Parker.  I  may  not 
name  some  among  the  living,  in  whom  equally 
it  appears. 

Wendell  Phillips  was  a  Puritan  :  supple  as 
an  athlete,  graceful  as  Apollo,  gentle  as  a 
woman  among  his  friends,  to  whom  eloquence 
was  an  idiom,  and  the  delightful  grace  of 
conversation  both  an  ornament  and  a  weapon, 
but  from  the  silver  bow  of  whose  musical  lips 
flew  fiery  shafts  against  whatever  appeared 
to  him  wrong,  and  whose  white  plume  shone 
always  in  the  dangerous  van  of  the  heady 
fight.  He  had  in  his  veins  the  blood,  and  in 
his  spirit  the  Calvinism,  of  his  first  ancestor 
in  this  country,  of  whom  it  is  recorded  that 
having  been  ordained  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, and  having  served  honorably  in  one  of 
its  parishes,  he  would  not  minister  to  the 
Congregational  Church  at  Watertown  unless 
it  would  rebrdain  him  for  itself,  treating  as  null 
the  Bishop's  rite. 

John  Brown  was  in  some  sense  a  Puritan, 
though  certainly  the  sword  of  the  Lord  and  of 
Gideon  was  not  wisely  wielded  by  him,  and 
he  might  have  learned  more  from  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  than  he  did  from  the  Decalogue, 
and  from  favorite  prophets. 


Cfje  puritan  Spirit  67 

Ladies,  and  Gentlemen,  this  spirit  is  by  no 
means  dead  in  the  land,  though  secular 
success  may  seem  at  times  to  have  fettered 
or  dissolved  it ;  though  a  daintier  culture  may 
have  made  men  insensitive,  if  not  positively 
averse,  to  its  austere  dignity  and  power ;  vm 

THE  PURITAN 

though    it   may    almost    seem     whelmed     and  SPIRIT  STILL 

.  LIVING 

buried  under  the  rush  of  incessant  immigration, 
from  lands  whose  manners  and  moral  life  it 
has  not  trained.  It  will  surely  reappear,  if 
too  daring  assaults  are  made  on  the  ancient 
order  and  faith  of  the  New  England  churches, 
or  on  that  system  of  public  schools  which  is 
to  us  a  great  inheritance  ;  or  if  socialistic, 
anarchic  theories  seek  to  minister  to  passion, 
to  subvert  public  order,  and  to  conquer,  defile, 
and  despoil  the  continent. 

In  it  is  really,  as  I  believe,  our  assurance  of 

THE    PURITAN 

the    future.       Without  it    our    civilization    will  SpIRIT  OUR 

ASSURANCE  OF 

rot.  All  progress  in  what  calls  itself  "  cul-  THE  FuTURB 
ture  "  will  only  make  us  tender,  luxurious,  and 
inert,  if  this  be  absent.  All  simply  material 
accumulations  will  but  make  in  the  end  a 
bigger  bonfire,  to  be  touched  by  the  torch  of 
agrarian  passion.  The  nation,  without  this 
spirit  in  it,  however  plethoric  in  wealth,  how- 


68  Cfje  puritan 


ever  boastful  of  its  strength,  however  famous  in 
the  world,  will  become  at  last  but  a  bald-headed 
Samson.  It  may  trust  in  some  ineffectual  wig 
to  replace  its  vanished  native  strength,  but  the 
gates  of  Gaza  will  not  even  tremble  before  its 
touch. 

But  with  this  spirit,  affirmative  of  the  truth 
as  God  gives  us  to  see  it,  devoted  to  righteous- 
ness, and  to  Him  who  eternally  advances  it  in 
the  earth,  seeing  the  glory  of  man  revealed  in 
his  relation  to  the  immensities,  and  in  his 
essential  correspondence  with  righteousness, 
and  looking  for  the  ages,  even  here  on  the 
earth,  in  which  that  is  to  triumph,  for  which  we 
are  ready  ourselves  to  labor,  to  suffer,  and  to 
endure,  no  difficulties  will  be  too  great  to  be 
encountered,  and  no  assaults  or  perils  fatal. 
The  moral  life  of  the  nation  will  then  equal 
its  physical  might  and  its  great  opportunity. 
Its  virtue  will  not  fail,  and  the  iron  in  its  blood 
will  not  be  found  wanting. 
x  Here,  then,  is  our  duty  plainly  before  us  : 

OUR  DUTY  TO 

THE  PURITAN  not  to  eulogize  this  spirit,  but  to  incorporate  it, 
and  make  it  a  part  of  our  personal  life  ;  not  to 
put  it  away  from  us,  as  something  which  spe- 
cially pertained  to  the  past,  but  to  set  it  forth 


puritan  Spirit  69 


afresh  in  our  modern  conditions.  We  may 
present  it  in  gentler  exhibition  than  it  found 
in  the  old  time.  We  may  combine  with  it,  as 
we  ought,  an  ampler  love  of  grace  and  beauty. 
We  may  rise,  as  we  ought,  to  higher  levels  of 
spiritual  sympathy  with  differing  opinions  than 
were  familiar,  perhaps  possible,  to  our  fathers. 
We  may  be  more  tender  toward  doubting 
minds,  and  more  eager  to  minister  to  those 
who  are  walking,  with  overshadowed  and  sad- 
dened souls,  amid  the  mighty  and  mystic  prob- 
lems of  life  and  of  the  universe.  But  we  must 
retain  the  same  spirit  in  ourselves,  and  make 
it,  as  far  as  our  influence  goes,  generally  con- 
trolling, organific  in  the  nation,  if  we  would  do 
our  work  aright.  For  it  is  true  now,  as  true  in 
the  midst  of  all  the  beauty  and  all  the  wealth 
with  which  commerce,  invention,  and  art  sur- 
round us,  as  true  in  this  city  of  the  Puritan's 
pride  and  of  our  admiration,  as  it  was  when 
Paul  wrote  to  the  despised  disciples  in  Ephe- 
sus,  under  the  shadow  of  that  temple  of  Diana 
to  which  princes  were  tributaries  and  whose 
renown  was  in  all  the  world  —  "  We  wrestle  not 
against  flesh  and  blood,  but  against  principali- 
ties, against  powers,  against  the  rulers  of  the 


70  €f)e  puritan 


darkness  of  this  world,  against  spiritual  wick- 
edness in  high  places.  Wherefore  take  unto 
you  the  whole  armour  of  God,  that  ye  may 
be  able  to  withstand  in  the  evil  day,  and  hav- 
ing done  all,  to  stand." 

We  want  the  same  temper,  amid  the  changed 
world  in  which  our  personal  lot  has  been  cast, 
which  has  been  in  those  who  have  stood,  in  all 
their  times,  against  corruption  in  Church  or  in 
State,  with  hearts  that  no  more  failed,  and 
brows  that  no  more  blanched,  than  does  the 
granite  before  the  rush  of  the  storm  ;  the  same 
temper  which  was  in  our  fathers  two  hundred 
and  seventy  years  ago,  when  they  left  whatever 
was  beautiful  at  home,  in  obedience  to  con- 
science, and  faced,  without  flinching,  the  sea 
and  the  savage  ;  when  they  sought  not  high 
things,  and  were  joyfully  ready  to  be  stepping- 
stones  for  others,  if  they  might  advance  the 
kingdom  of  God  ;  but  when  they  gave  to  this 
New  England  a  life  which  has  molded  its 
rugged  strength  from  that  day  to  this,  has 
made  it  a  monument  surpassing  all  others 
which  man  can  build,  and  a  perpetual  living 
seminary  of  character  and  of  power  for  all  the 
land  ;  —  a  life,  please  God  !  which  shall  never 


puritan 


be  extinct,  among  the  stronger  souls  of  men, 
till  the  earth  itself  shall  have  vanished  like  a 
dream. 


72  cfte  puritan 


SYNOPSIS 

I.  THE  NEED  OF  THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  Page  6 

II.  OPPOSITION  TO  THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  7 

III.  WIDE  AREA  OF  THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  8 

IV.  ELEMENTS  OF  THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  10 

1.  An  intense  conviction  of  apprehended  truth. 

2.  An  intense  sense  of  the  authority  of  righteousness. 

3.  A  profound  assurance  of  God's  righteous  rule. 

4.  A  profound  sense  of  the  dignity  of  man. 

V.    DEFICIENCIES  IN  THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  25 

1.  Want  of  interest  in  things  esthetic. 

2.  Contempt  for  minor  elegancies  of  life. 

3.  Lack  of  affectionate  sympathy  with  questioning  minds. 

VI.    MAGNIFICENT  QUALITIES  OF  THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  36 

1.  A  masterful  sincerity. 

2.  A  majestic  Ideal. 

3.  A  superb  and  shining  courage. 

4.  A  triumphant  disregard  of  institutions. 

5.  The  clearest  vision  of  things  celestial. 

VII.    THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  COSMICAL  47 

1 .  In  the  Old  Testament. 

2.  In  the  New  Testament. 

3.  In  Secular  History. 

4.  In  Ecclesiastical  History. 

5.  In  the  Pilgrim  Fathers. 

6.  In  Early  New  England. 

7.  In  Recent  Days. 

VIII.    THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  STILL  LIVING.  67 

IX.    THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  OUR  ASSURANCE  OF  THE  FUTURE       67 

X.    OUR  DUTY  TO  THE  PURITAN  SPIRIT  68 


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